We have a duty to help the children of Palestine

On the UN’s Universal Children’s Day – 20 November – teachers and lecturers urge the UK government to lobby for the release of child prisoners and an end to the mistreatment of children detained under military law

‘It is a blight on the international community that we are not preventing the arrest of children following the invasion of their homes.’
Photograph: Odd Andersen/AFP/Getty Images

As teachers and lecturers, we feel strongly that today, on the UN’s Universal Children’s Day, we must call on our government to work with increased determination to achieve improved welfare for the children living in Palestine under occupation and in Gaza. On this day, we are reminded that we have a duty to advocate for children’s rights as set out in the declaration of the rights of the child, which was adopted in 1959, and the convention on the rights of the child, adopted in 1989.

We believe it is shameful that children live in fear, in particular the fear of being detained and imprisoned under military law.

It is a blight on the international community that we are not preventing the arrest of children following the invasion of their homes in the middle of the night by heavily armed soldiers. We are horrified that following their arrest children have their hands bound with plastic ties, are blindfolded and transported away from their families in military vehicles.

We cannot comprehend how any government can preside over such a system. Then to hear that children are also held in solitary confinement makes us realise that this is a system that contravenes the rights of a child in so many ways.